


Strangers Who Aren't So Strange

by guardian_chaos



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Friendship, Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardian_chaos/pseuds/guardian_chaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone familiar tries to share John's cab.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strangers Who Aren't So Strange

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note** : This is my attempt at happy!post-Reichenbach fic. It is brief, but also (I hope) worthy of a smile.

London was cold today, the dizzying smog of pollution graying the sky. John's heart beat furiously inside his chest, a sound he could not imagine escaping the notice of the man standing outside of the cab John had only just gotten into. John could not look away, his eyes locked on the stranger's pale face as his brain tried to catch up with what his panicking heart had already accepted as reality.

"Sherlock?" he stammered, his lungs having some difficulty adapting to this unexpected alarm at the end of a day that had, up until this moment, been horribly dull.

“John.” The Not-A-Stranger-After-All stood in front of the door, preventing it from closing. Sherlock was breathing hard from his run to catch John's cab before it pulled away. New lines edged his eyes, catching shadows that mirrored John’s own. Sherlock swallowed, shuffling from side to side as the cabbie looked between the two men but did not say a word, apparently knowing to stay out of whatever was unfolding. Sherlock looked nervous, as if he was unsure about what he was doing. “Mind if we share a cab?”

John’s jaw flexed, tensing and loosening at a speed unprecedented. The traffic in the nearby streets sounded muted, John's ears suddenly full of cotton. Words bubbled up in his throat: angry, furious words like, _‘why’_ and _‘three years!’_ and _‘how dare you?’_ and _‘where have you been?’_ and _‘you don’t know the damage you left behind!’_

Instead, he shuffled to the side and patted the smooth, vinyl seat. “Sure." He seemed to be talking on autopilot. There was no other possible explanation for why his voice was completely stable, despite the fact that a man who had been declared dead years ago was now looking at him with eyes that were definitely very, _very_ alive. "There’s room enough for two.”

Sherlock fell into the cab like a starving dog offered food for the first time in months. “You have questions.” He straightened his scarf, keeping it tight around his neck. “I will answer them all.”

John threw his hands up, as if he could snatch answers from somewhere in the ceiling. “You’re bloody right, you will!”

“New coordinates?” the cabbie asked, his arm around the back of his seat.

“No,” John said, retreating to his own window and leaving space between himself and his long-vanished friend. “We’re going to the same place. Home, that’s all. 221B Baker Street.” He bridged the gap between himself and Sherlock to poke Sherlock in the arm. “Unless I’m mistaken?” He didn’t mean to, but he found himself beginning to grin. “Am I about to be dragged somewhere?”

Sherlock smirked back. “Not at present. Perhaps later.” Sherlock pressed his hands together beneath his chin, near-vibrating with a sudden glee that filled his eyes. “John, the things I have seen!”

John laughed, feeling a sense of purity course through his veins like sunshine warming his skin from the inside. “Sherlock, I’m furious!”

Sherlock laughed, too, though he didn’t seem like he knew if he should be or not. “You have every right to be.”

“I mean seriously, genuinely furious!”

Sherlock grinned just a little bit wider. “Obviously.”

They laughed until the mood settled, the cab making its way without further event through the streets of London.

“You were missed,” was said finally, a quiet admission in the cab. It didn’t matter who said it. Either one might have, and it would have been equally true.

"You were, too."

And so they sat, together again, homeward-bound. The day was full of promise.

 

~2/19/2012


End file.
